you can't fight City Hall
- (chiefly US, literal, figurative) Nothing can be done to change the situation, because it is a governmental decision or a similarly institutional decision (e.g., high-level corporate, senior military brass, dominant cultural norm).
I see they're going to build the airport after all. I suppose you can't fight City Hall.
1998, Sarah Schulman, Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, Duke University Press, page 45:As Audre Lorde, my professor at Hunter College, told our class in 1982, "That you can't fight City Hall is a rumor being spread by City Hall."